Lenovo Z50 15.6 inch HD Laptop (AMD FX-7500 APU with Radeon R7 Graphics, 8 GB RAM, 1 TB Storage, Windows 10 Home) - Black

Recently bought this item as a used condition from the Amazon warehouse deals as a brand new machine was out of stock. The condition of the machine I purchased was stated as 'very good' and when it arrived there wasn't a mark on it! Was basically in brand new condition with no marks or wear on it so this was very pleasing.The start up times and running of the laptop are brilliant, can easily run 2-3 programs at a time with ease. I've been running Spotify and Chrome (with two or three tabs) running at once and it can easily cope with this.The real reason I bought this laptop was to play games and it does this brilliantly too. So far I've been playing total war medieval 2 and Mount and blade, the laptop runs these games although they are dated games runs them on max settings and I've really been testing it with massive battles and its coped with no lag or slowing down at all. Also runs football manager brilliantly, I can have a big save going with the large custom database, 8 active leagues and max settings in matches with ease. To note I'm running football manager with Spotify in the background too and there's no slowing down in game or with my music. Next games to download will be Skyrim/Oblivion and Rome total war 2 so I will update the review once I run them and see how well they run but can see no reason why they shouldn't be able to run based on how its ran so far.Overall this is a great laptop and I highly recommend it to anyone looking a budget laptop for gaming or multitasking. I will note though that the processor running speed is 2.1GHz not the 3GHz it says in the describion but it does turbo to that speed. The hardware is a little dated being released in 2014 (I think). In short highly recommend this to anyone, won't find better for this price

I gave this laptop 3 stars, and I feel it's the best possible score I can give it. In fact, I feel I might be being a little generous!I am a cameraman and editor, a huge tech enthusiast. My review will feature a little about what I needed and expected from this laptop, and what was delivered.Pros:Good performing CPU for its price bracket (It's a 2.1ghz that CAN boost to 3.3ghz, don't be confused by the false advertising here), a decent amount of RAM (I'll be upgrading to 16GB though), pretty fast boot times. Battery life suits me well. I have been desktop only for a good number of years now, and my last laptop didn't perform as well as this does in terms of battery life.Cons:Despite this product being advertised as a 'powerful multimedia performer', it is FAR from it. The lacklustre screen and mediocre audio makes for a very unpleasant cinema experience, listening experience - and for my needs - a TERRIBLE laptop for editing on. (If you need this laptop for your career in the creative industries, just don't bother. Go for something like an ASUS with similar specs!)First of all, the screen/monitor: This laptop displays the colours, tones and shades that it CAN display, very well. HOWEVER, it's colour range is the worst I've seen of any laptop I have ever used. Things look washed out, and upon trying to correct the screen's gamma, found that there was no setting that would allow it to display gamma perfectly in conjunction with Windows' guidelines. It also has a HUGE (SERIOUSLY, MONUMENTAL/MAHOOSIVE/COLLOSAL/GARGANTUAN) amount of banding. By this, I mean that in dark films, there are such little shades of blacks and greys that this laptop can actually display, that you can count the different shades on your hand. Because of this, dark areas look like a moving gradient of about 4 colours or so. This isn't REALLY dark scenes, this is your average film. I've noticed it also does this with things that are of orange-y kind of colour. Again, this makes for a terrible viewing experience, as films look far less cinematic, and makes films feel pixelated in areas (Looks like the film has been downloaded from a dodgy site, regardless if it's from a DVD or you're on Netflix/Prime).As for the supposed 'Stunning Dolby Surround', I genuinely think that there is nothing dolby about it. I honestly believe these are fraudulent claims.. I say this as there is NOTHING surround about it. The speakers are placed on the bottom of the laptop. THE BOTTOM OF A... LAPTOP. Laptops are (clearly) designed for sitting on a surface such as a lap or desk, meaning that the speakers on the bottom will be covered and will provide an even harsher, terrible sound. You're now thinking "Yeah, but it's a good price and I can just plug headphones in". WRONG. The entire audio set up of this laptop is so poor that your headphones are just going to sound like the audio that is produced from the speakers. Upon testing this with an extremely well produced track on Soundcloud with my production headphones in comparison with my smartphone, I was actually quite angered with how little effort went in to the audio implementation of this laptop. The song sounded completely different. The mids were just completely awful and borderline non-existent, the lows were completely non-existent and there were actually some instruments from the song that could not be heard AT ALL from the headphones when plugged in to this laptop.To me, that is FAR from 'stunning' like described in this posting.Because of both of these issues, Lenovo need to stop marketing this as a 'powerful multimedia performer', because that is without doubt a false statement, fraudulent and false advertising. I have a 10 year old laptop with a 1080p display and a far superior sound to this that was a similar price when I bought it.The reason this still gets 3 stars is because it includes USB 3.0, the battery life, the CPU and the boot time. I should be giving it a lower score to be honest, but as I plan on keeping this laptop strictly for office work, I feel giving it a lower score might seem hypocritical.

Update. I've been using it for some time now, and have a feel for its flaws. It just about plays XCOM2, on low settings, clunky. That should give you an idea of the gaming limit. Other Steam games, like Civ V, Skyrim etc, it copes with easily. This graphics card is a few years old, and it shows.DDR3 RAM, not DDR4 so not amazingly fast.As noted by others, it runs hot. This makes me slightly concerned about its cooling. No problems.... yet.The edges around the keyboard are sharp, which after some time typing gets really annoying.The touchpad *can* be twitchy, and you can end up accidently pinch-zooming in by accident.The screen is nice and big, but doesn't do darks too well.The battery life gives about 2hrs gaming.That said, it has a fast start up time, good storage capacity, and is otherwise an excellent machine. For the circa £200 I paid it's fantastic value, and a really great buy.---------This isn't the newest laptop in the world, so you shouldn't expect to play the latest games. That being said, it's right for what I need - an every day driver to do some coding and casual gaming.It has a AMD FX 7500 dedicated graphics card, so is way ahead of anything using Intel's built-in graphics.The screen, as mentioned in other reviews, doesn't do darks and black at all well. Again, if you're buying it for gaming or films, this will probably annoy you. Doesn't bother me, as I'm using it for work.Straight out of the box there is a lot of work to do. Being Win10, there will be a whole queue of updates waiting. Be prepared to spend the next hour or so doing that.Also, bios update from the Lenovo site and all the suggested critical updates.Also the AMD drivers.Once all that is out of the way, there is still bloat to deal with. McAfee AV and some of the Lenovo stuff needs to go. I also checked for SUPERFISH, and luckily mine didn't have it.I would have liked the option for it to come with more RAM. As it was, I spent an extra £60 maxing it out at 16gb RAM. That means I've got two brand new 4gb sticks wasted. If I could have chosen for it to be shipped with 16, that would have been nice.The thing runs quickly and very quietly. No real problems so far, although it was a bit slow when I tried to get to bios.For developing and playing older games via Steam (MTW II, max settings), it is perfect. Due to it being an older machine, having a poor screen, and not having the option for 16gb, and only 3 month warranty, I give it 3 stars. What bumps it up to 4 is the price. I bought this for around £220 on an Amazon daily deal, and that is frankly a ridiculous price for what you're getting. It was too good a deal to pass on.In summary, it has its flaws but it's perfect for what I use it for.I'll try to remember to update this review in 3 months.